Chapter 13

See the works of Amort and Du Molinet, mentioned underCanon. Vol. ii. of Helyot’sHist. des ordres religieux(1792) is devoted to canons regular of all kinds. The information is epitomized by Max Heimbucher,Orden und Kongregationen, i. (1896), §§ 54-60, where copious references to the literature of the subject are supplied. See also Otto Zöckler,Askese und Mönchtum, ii. (1897), p. 422; and Wetzer und Welte,Kirchenlexicon(2nd ed.), art. “Canonici Regulares” and “Canonissae.” For England see J.W. Clark,Observances in use at the Augustinian Priory at Barnwell(1897); and an article inJournal of Theological Studies(v.) by Scott Holmes.

(E. C. B.)

AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS,orFriars, a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes called (but improperly) Black Friars (seeFriars). In the first half of the 13th century there were in central Italy various small congregations of hermits living according to different rules. The need of co-ordinating and organizing these hermits induced the popes towards 1250 to unite into one body a number of these congregations, so as to form a single religious order, living according to the Rule of St Augustine, and called the Order of Augustinian Hermits, or simply the Augustinian Order. Special constitutions were drawn up for its government, on the same lines as the Dominicans and other mendicants—a general elected by chapter, provincials to rule in the different countries, with assistants, definitors and visitors. For this reason, and because almost from the beginning the term “hermits” became a misnomer (for they abandoned the deserts and lived conventually in towns), they ranked among the friars, and became the fourth of the mendicant orders. The observance and manner of life was, relatively to those times, mild, meat being allowed four days in the week. The habit is black. The institute spread rapidly all over western Europe, so that it eventually came to have forty provinces and 2000 friaries with some 30,000 members. In England there were not more than about 30 houses (see Tables in F.A. Gasquet’sEnglish Monastic Life). The reaction against the inevitable tendencies towards mitigation and relaxation led to a number of reforms that produced upwards of twenty different congregations within the order, each governed by a vicar-general, who was subject to the general of the order. Some of these congregations went in the matter of austerity beyond the original idea of the institute; and so in the 16th century there arose in Spain, Italy and France, Discalced or Barefooted Hermits of St Augustine, who provided in each province one house wherein a strictly eremitical life might be led by such as desired it.

About 1500 a great attempt at a reform of this kind was set on foot among the Augustinian Hermits of northern Germany, and they were formed into a separate congregation independent of the general. It was from this congregation that Luther went forth, and great numbers of the German Augustinian Hermits, among them Wenceslaus Link the provincial, followed him and embraced the Reformation, so that the congregation was dissolved in 1526.

The Reformation and later revolutions have destroyed most of the houses of Augustinian Hermits, so that now only about a hundred exist in various parts of Europe and America; in Ireland they are relatively numerous, having survived the penal times. The Augustinian school of theology (Noris, Berti) was formed among the Hermits. There have been many convents of Augustinian Hermitesses, chiefly in the Barefooted congregations; such convents exist still in Europe and North America, devoted to education and hospital work. There have also been numerous congregations of Augustinian Tertiaries, both men and women, connected with the order and engaged on charitable works of every kind (seeTertiaries).

See Helyot,Hist. des ordres religieux(1792), iii.; Max Heimbucher,Orden und Kongregationen, i. (1896), § 61-65; Wetzer und Welte,Kirchenlexicon(2nd ed.), art. “Augustiner”; Herzog,Realencyklopädie(3rd ed.), art. “Augustiner.” The chief book on the subject is Th. Kolde,Die deutschen Augustiner-Kongregationen(1879).

(E. C. B.)

AUGUSTINIANS,in the Roman Catholic Church, a generic name for religious orders that follow the so-called “Rule of St Augustine.” The chief of these orders are:—Augustinian Canons (q.v.), Augustinian Hermits (q.v.) or Friars, Premonstratensians (q.v.), Trinitarians (q.v.), Gilbertines (seeGilbert of Sempringham, St). The following orders, though not called Augustinians, also have St Augustine’s Rule as the basis of their life: Dominicans, Servites, Our Lady of Ransom, Hieronymites, Assumptionsts and many others; also orders of women: Brigittines, Ursulines, Visitation nuns and a vast number of congregations of women, spread over the Old and New Worlds, devoted to education and charitable works of all kinds.

See Helyot,Ordres religieux(1792), vols. ii., iii., iv.; Max Heimbucher,Orden und Kongregationen, i. (1896), § 66-85; Wetzer und Welte,Kirchenlexicon, i., 1665-1667.

St Augustine never wrote a Rule, properly so called; butEp.211 (al.109) is a long letter of practical advice to a community of nuns, on their daily life; andSerm.355, 356 describe the common life he led along with his clerics in Hippo. When in the second half of the 11th century the clergy of a great number of collegiate churches were undertaking to live a substantially monastic form of life (seeCanon), it was natural that they should look back to this classical model for clerics living in community. And so attention was directed to St Augustine’s writings on community life; and out of them, and spurious writings attributed to him, were compiled towards the close of the 11th century three Rules, the “First” and “Second” being mere fragments, but the “Third” a substantive rule of life in 45 sections, often grouped in twelve chapters. This Third Rule is the one known as “the Rule of St Augustine.” Being confined to fundamental principles without entering into details, it has proved itself admirably suited to form the foundation of the religious life of the most varied orders and congregations, and since the 12th century it has proved more prolific than the Benedictine Rule. In an uncritical age it was attributed to St Augustine himself, and Augustinians, especially the canons, put forward fantastic claims to antiquity, asserting unbroken continuity, not merely from St Augustine, but from Christ and the Apostles.

The three Rules are printed in Dugdale,Monasticon(ed. 1846), vi. 42; and in Holsten-Brockie,Codex Regularum, ii. 121. For the literature see Otto Zöckler,Askese und Mönchtum(1897), pp. 347, 354.

(E. C. B.)

AUGUSTOWO,a city of Russian Poland, in the government of Suwalki, 20 m. S. of the town of that name, on a canal (65 m.) connecting the Vistula with the Niemen. It was founded in 1557 by Sigismund II. (Augustus), and is laid out in a very regular manner, with a spacious market-place. It carries on a large trade in cattle and horses, and manufactures linen and huckaback. Pop. (1897) 12,746.

AUGUSTUS(a name1derived from Lat.augeo, increase,i.e.venerable, majestic, Gr.Σεβαστός), the title given by the Roman senate, on the 17th of January 27B.C., to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (63B.C.-A.D.14), or as he was originally designated, Gaius Octavius, in recognition of his eminent services to the state (Mon. Anc.34), and borne by him as the first of the Roman emperors. The title was adopted by all the succeeding Caesars or emperors of Rome long after they had ceased to be connected by blood with the first Augustus.

Gaius Octavius was born in Rome on the 23rd of September 63B.C., the year of Cicero’s consulship and of Catiline’s conspiracy. He came of a family of good standing, long settled at Velitrae (Velletri), but his father was the first of the family to obtain a curule magistracy at Rome and senatorial dignity. His mother, however, was Atia, daughter of Julia, the wife of M. Atius Balbus, and sister of Julius Caesar, and it was this connexion with the great dictator which determined his career. In his fifth year (58B.C.) his father died; about a year later his motherremarried, and the young Octavius passed under her care to that of his stepfather, L. Marcius Philippus. At the age of twelve (51B.C.) he delivered the customary funeral panegyric on his grandmother Julia, his first public appearance. On the 18th of October 48 (or ? 47)B.C.he assumed the “toga virilis” and was elected into the pontifical college, an exceptional honour which he no doubt owed to his great-uncle, now dictator and master of Rome. In 46B.C.he shared in the glory of Caesar’s African triumph, and in 45 he was made a patrician by the senate, and designated as one of Caesar’s “masters of the horse” for the next year. In the autumn of 45, Caesar, who was planning his Parthian campaign, sent his nephew to study quietly at the Greek colony of Apollonia, in Illyria. Here the news of Caesar’s murder reached him and he crossed to Italy. On landing he learnt that Caesar had made him his heir and adopted him into the Julian gens, whereby he acquired the designation of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The inheritance was a perilous one; his mother and others would have dissuaded him from accepting it, but he, confident in his abilities, declared at once that he would undertake its obligations, and discharge the sums bequeathed by the dictator to the Roman people. Mark Antony had possessed himself of Caesar’s papers and effects, and made light of his young nephew’s pretensions. Brutus and Cassius paid him little regard, and dispersed to their respective provinces. Cicero, much charmed at the attitude of Antonius, hoped to make use of him, and flattered him to the utmost, with the expectation, however, of getting rid of him as soon as he had served his purpose. Octavianus conducted himself with consummate adroitness, making use of all competitors for power, but assisting none. Considerable forces attached themselves to him. The senate, when it armed the consuls against Antonius, called upon him for assistance; and he took part in the campaign in which Antonius was defeated at Mutina (43B.C.). The soldiers of Octavianus demanded the consulship for him, and the senate, though now much alarmed, could not prevent his election. He now effected a coalition with Antonius and Lepidus, and on the 27th of November 43B.C.the three were formally appointed a triumvirate for the reconstitution of the commonwealth for five years. They divided the western provinces among them, the east being held for the republic by Brutus and Cassius. They drew up a list of proscribed citizens, and caused the assassination of three hundred senators and two thousand knights. They further confiscated the territories of many cities throughout Italy, and divided them among their soldiers. Cicero was murdered at the demand of Antonius. The remnant of the republican party took refuge either with Brutus and Cassius in the East, or with Sextus Pompeius, who had made himself master of the seas.

Octavianus and Antonius crossed the Adriatic in 42B.C.to reduce the last defenders of the republic. Brutus and Cassius were defeated, and fell at the battle of Philippi. War soon broke out between the victors, the chief incident of which was the siege and capture by famine of Perusia, and the alleged sacrifice of three hundred of its defenders by the young Caesar at the altar of his uncle. But peace was again made between them (40B.C.). Antonius married Octavia, his rival’s sister, and took for himself the eastern half of the empire, leaving the west to Caesar. Lepidus was reduced to the single province of Africa. Meanwhile Sextus Pompeius made himself formidable by cutting off the supplies of grain from Rome. The triumvirs were obliged to concede to him the islands in the western Mediterranean. But Octavianus could not allow the capital to be kept in alarm for its daily sustenance. He picked a quarrel with Sextus, and when his colleagues failed to support him, undertook to attack him alone. Antonius, indeed, came at last to his aid, in return for military assistance in the campaign he meditated in the East. But Octavianus was well served by the commander of his fleet, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. Sextus was completely routed, and driven into Asia, where he perished soon afterwards (36B.C.). Lepidus was an object of contempt to all parties, and Octavianus and Antonius remained to fight for supreme power.

The five years (36-31B.C.) which preceded the decisive encounter between the two rivals were wasted by Antony in fruitless campaigns, and in a dalliance with Cleopatra which shocked Roman sentiment. By Octavian they were employed in strengthening his hold on the West, and his claim to be regarded as the one possible saviour of Rome and Roman civilization. His marriage with Livia (38B.C.) placed by his side a sagacious counsellor and a loyal ally, whose services were probably as great as even those of his trusted friend Marcus Agrippa. With their help he set himself to win the confidence of a public still inclined to distrust the author of the proscriptions of 43B.C.Brigandage was suppressed in Italy, and the safety of the Italian frontiers secured against the raids of Alpine tribes on the north-west and of Illyrians on the east, while Rome was purified and beautified, largely with the help of Agrippa (aedile in 33B.C.). Meanwhile, indignation at Antony’s un-Roman excesses, and alarm at Cleopatra’s rumoured schemes of founding a Greco-Oriental empire, were rapidly increasing. In 32B.C.Antony’s repudiation of his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian, and the discovery of his will, with its clear proofs of Cleopatra’s dangerous ascendancy, brought matters to a climax, and war was declared, not indeed against Antony, but against Cleopatra.

The decisive battle was fought on the 2nd of September 31B.C.at Actium on the Epirot coast, and resulted in the almost total destruction of Antony’s fleet and the surrender of his land forces. Not quite a year later (Aug. 1, 30B.C.) followed the capture of Alexandria and the deaths by their own hands of Antony and Cleopatra. On the 11th of January 29B.C.the restoration of peace was marked by the closing of the temple of Janus for the first time for 200 years. In the summer Octavian returned to Italy, and in August celebrated a three days’ triumph. He was welcomed, not as a successful combatant in a civil war, but as the man who had vindicated the sovereignty of Rome against its assailants, as the saviour of the republic and of his fellow-citizens, above all as the restorer of peace.

He was now, to quote his own words, “master of all things,” and the Roman world looked to him for some permanent settlement of the distracted empire. His first task was the re-establishment of a regular and constitutional government, such as had not existed since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon twenty years before. To this task he devoted the next eighteen months (Aug. 29-Jan. 27B.C.). In the article onRome:History(q.v.), his achievements are described in detail, and only a brief summary need be given here. The “principate,” to give the new form of government its most appropriate name, was a compromise thoroughly characteristic of the combination of tenacity of purpose with cautious respect for forms and conventions which distinguished its author. The republic was restored; senate, magistrates and assembly resumed their ancient functions; and the public life of Rome began to run once more in the familiar grooves. The triumvirate with its irregularities and excesses was at an end. The controlling authority, which Octavian himself wielded, could not indeed be safely dispensed with. But henceforward he was to exercise it under constitutional forms and limitations, and with the express sanction of the senate and people. Octavian was legally invested for a period of ten years with the government of the important frontier provinces, with the sole command of the military and naval forces of the state, and the exclusive control of its foreign relations. At home it was understood that he would year by year be elected consul, and enjoy the powers and pre-eminence attached to the chief magistracy of the Roman state. Thus the republic was restored under the presidency and patronage of its “first citizen” (princeps civitatis).

In acknowledgment of this happy settlement and of his other services further honours were conferred upon Octavian. On the 13th of January 27B.C., the birthday of the restored republic, he was awarded the civic crown to be placed over the door of his house, in token that he had saved his fellow-citizens and restored the Republic. Four days later (Jan. 17) the senate conferred upon him the cognomen of Augustus.

But it was not only the machinery of government in Rome that needed repair. Twenty years of civil war and confusion had disorganized the empire, and the strong hand of Augustus,as he must now be called, could alone restore confidence and order. Towards the end of 27B.C.he left Rome for Gaul, and from that date until October 19B.C.he was mainly occupied with the reorganization of the provinces and of the provincial administration, first of all in the West and then in the East. It was during his stay in Asia (20B.C.) that the Parthian king Phraates voluntarily restored the Roman prisoners and standards taken at Carrhae (53B.C.), a welcome tribute to the respect inspired by Augustus, and a happy augury for the future. In October 19B.C.he returned to Rome, and the senate ordered that the day of his return (Oct. 12) should thenceforward be observed as a public holiday. The period of ten years for which hisimperiumhad been granted him was nearly ended, and though much remained to be done, very much had been accomplished. The pacification of northern Spain by the subjugation of the Astures and Cantabri, the settlement of the wide territories added to the empire by Julius Caesar in Gaul—the “New Gaul,” or the “long-haired Gaul” (Gallia Comata) as it was called by way of distinction from the old province of Gallia Narbonensis (seeGaul)—and the re-establishment of Roman authority over the kings and princes of the Near East, were achievements which fully justified the acclamations of senate and people.

In 18B.C.Augustus’simperiumwas renewed for five years, and his tried friend Marcus Agrippa, now his son-in-law, was associated with him as a colleague. From October of 19B.C.till the middle of 16B.C.Augustus’s main attention was given to Rome and to domestic reform, and to this period belong such measures as the Julian law “as to the marriage of the orders.” In June of 17B.C.the opening of the new and better age, which he had worked to bring about, was marked by the celebration in Rome of the Secular games. The chief actors in the ceremony were Augustus himself and his colleague Agrippa,—while, as the extant record tells us, the processional hymn, chanted by youths and maidens first before the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine and then before the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, was composed by Horace. The hymn, the well-knownCarmen Saeculare, gives fervent expression to the prevalent emotions of joy and gratitude.

In the next year (16B.C.), however, Augustus was suddenly called away from Rome to deal with a problem which engrossed much of his attention for the next twenty-five years. The defeat of Marcus Lollius, the legate commanding on the Rhine, by a horde of German invaders, seems to have determined Augustus to take in hand the whole question of the frontiers of the empire towards the north, and the effective protection of Gaul and Italy. The work was entrusted to Augustus’s step-sons Tiberius and Drusus. The first step was the annexation of Noricum and Raetia (16-15B.C.), which brought under Roman control the mountainous district through which the direct routes lay from North Italy to the upper waters of the Rhine and the Danube. East of Noricum Tiberius reduced to order for the time the restless tribes of Pannonia, and probably established a military post at Carnuntum on the Danube. To Drusus fell the more ambitious task of advancing the Roman frontier line from the Rhine to the Elbe, a work which occupied him until his death in Germany in 9B.C.In 13B.C.Augustus had returned to Rome; his return, and the conclusion of his second period of rule, were commemorated by the erection of one of the most beautiful monuments of the Augustan age, the Ara Pacis Augustae (seeRoman Art, Pl. II, III). Hisimperiumwas renewed, again for five years, and in 12B.C., on the death of his former fellow-triumvir Lepidus, he was elected Pontifex Maximus. But this third period of his imperium brought with it losses which Augustus must have keenly felt. Only a few months after his reappointment as Augustus’s colleague, Marcus Agrippa, his trusted friend since boyhood, died. As was fully his due, his funeral oration was pronounced by Augustus, and he was buried in the mausoleum near the Tiber built by Augustus for himself and his family. Three years later his brilliant step-son Drusus died on his way back from a campaign in Germany, in which he had reached the Elbe. Finally in 8B.C.he lost the comrade who next to Agrippa had been the most intimate friend and counsellor of his early manhood, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, the patron of Virgil and Horace.

For the moment Augustus turned, almost of necessity, to his surviving step-son. Tiberius was associated with him as Agrippa had been in the tribunician power, was married against his will to Julia, and sent to complete his brother Drusus’s work in Germany (7-6B.C.). But Tiberius was only his step-son, and, with all his great qualities, was never a very lovable man. On the other hand, the two sons of Agrippa and Julia, Gaius and Lucius, were of his own blood and evidently dear to him. Both had been adopted by Augustus (178. c.). In 6B.C.Tiberius, who had just received the tribunician power, was transferred from Germany to the East, where the situation in Armenia demanded attention. His sudden withdrawal to Rhodes has been variously explained, but, in part at least, it was probably due to the plain indications which Augustus now gave of his wish that the young Caesars should be regarded as his heirs. The elder, Gaius, now fifteen years old (5B.C.), was formally introduced to the people as consul-designate by Augustus himself, who for this purpose resumed the consulship (12th) which he had dropped since 23B.C., and was authorized to take part in the deliberations of the senate. Three years later (2B.C.) Augustus, now consul for the 13th and last time, paid a similar compliment to the younger brother Lucius. In 1B.C.Gaius was given proconsular imperium, and sent to re-establish order in Armenia, and a few years afterwards (A.D.2) Lucius was sent to Spain, apparently to take command of the legions there. But the fates were unkind; Lucius fell sick and died at Marseilles on his way out, and in the next year (A.D.3) Gaius, wounded by an obscure hand in Armenia, started reluctantly for home, only to die in Lycia. Tiberius alone was left, and Augustus, at once accepting facts, formally and finally declared him to be his colleague and destined successor (A.D.4) and adopted him as his son.

The interest of the last ten years of Augustus’s life centres in the events occurring on the northern frontier. The difficult task of bringing the German tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe under Roman rule, commenced by Drusus in 13B.C., had on his death been continued by Tiberius (9-6B.C.). During Tiberius’s retirement in Rhodes no decisive progress was made, but inA.D.4 operations on a large scale were resumed. From Velleius Paterculus, who himself served in the war, we learn that in the first campaign Roman authority was restored over the tribes between the Rhine and the Weser, and that the Roman forces, instead of returning as usual to their headquarters on the Rhine, went into winter-quarters near the source of the Lippe. In the next year (A.D.5) the Elbe was reached by the troops, while the fleet, after a hazardous voyage, arrived at the mouth of the same river and sailed some way up it. Both feats are deservedly commemorated by Augustus himself in the Ancyran monument. To complete the conquest of Germany and to connect the frontier with the line of the Danube, it seemed that only one thing remained to be done, to break the power of the Marcomanni and their king Maroboduus. In the spring ofA.D.6 preparations were made for this final achievement; the territory of the Marcomanni (now Bohemia) was to be invaded simultaneously by two columns. One, starting apparently from the headquarters of the army of Upper Germany at Mainz, was to advance by way of the Black Forest and attack Maroboduus on the west; the other, led by Tiberius himself, was to start from the new military base at Carnuntum on the Danube and operate from the south-east.

But the attack was never delivered, for at this moment, in the rear of Tiberius, the whole of Pannonia and Dalmatia burst into a blaze of insurrection. The crisis is pronounced by Suetonius to have been more serious than any which had confronted Rome since the Hannibalic war, for it was not merely the loss of a province but the invasion of Italy that was threatened, and Augustus openly declared in the senate that the insurgents might be before Rome in ten days. He himself moved to Ariminum to be nearer the seat of war, recruiting was vigorously carried on in Rome and Italy, and legions were summoned fromMoesia and even from Asia. In the end, and not including the Thracian cavalry of King Rhoemetalces, a force of 15 legions with an equal number of auxiliaries was employed. Even so the task of putting down the insurrection was difficult enough, and it was not until late in the summer ofA.D.9, after three years of fighting, that Germanicus, who had been sent to assist Tiberius, ended the war by the capture of Andetrium in Dalmatia.

Five days later the news reached Rome of the disaster to Varus and his legions, in the heart of what was to have been the new province of Germany beyond the Rhine. The disaster was avowedly due entirely to Varus’s incapacity and vanity, and might no doubt have been repaired by leaders of the calibre of Tiberius and Germanicus. Augustus, however, was now seventy-two, the Dalmatian outbreak had severely tried his nerve, and now for the second time in three years the fates seemed to pronounce clearly against a further prosecution of his long-cherished scheme of a Roman Germany reaching to the Elbe.

All that was immediately necessary was done. Recruiting was pressed forward in Rome, and first Tiberius and then Germanicus were despatched to the Rhine. But the German leaders were too prudent to risk defeat, and the Roman generals devoted their attention mainly to strengthening the line of the Rhine.

The defeat of Varus, and the tacit abandonment of the plans of expansion begun twenty-five years before, are almost the last events of importance in the long principate of Augustus. The last five years of his life (A.D.10-14) were untroubled by war or disaster. Augustus was ageing fast, and was more and more disinclined to appear personally in the senate or in public. Yet inA.D.13 he consented, reluctantly we are told, to yet one more renewal of hisimperiumfor ten years, stipulating, however, that his step-son Tiberius, himself now over fifty, should be associated with himself on equal terms in the administration of the empire. Early in the same year (January 16,A.D.13) the last triumph of his principate was celebrated. Tiberius was now in Rome, the command on the Rhine having been given to Germanicus, who went out to it immediately after his consulship (A.D.12), and the time had come to celebrate the Dalmatian and Pannonian triumph, which the defeat of Varus had postponed. Augustus witnessed the triumphal procession, and Tiberius, as it turned from the Forum to ascend the Capitol, halted, descended from his triumphal car, and did reverence to his adopted father.

One last public appearance Augustus made in Rome. DuringA.D.13 he and Tiberius conducted a census of Roman citizens, the third taken by his orders; the first having been in 28B.C.at the very outset of his rule. The business of the census lasted over into the next year, but on the 11th of May,A.D.14, before a great crowd in the Campus Martius, Augustus took part in the solemn concluding ceremony of burying away out of sight the old age and inaugurating the new. The ceremony had been full of significance in 28B.C., and now more than forty years later it was given a pathetic interest by Augustus himself. When the tablets containing the vows to be offered for the welfare of the state during the next lustrum were handed to him, he left the duty of reciting them to Tiberius, saying that he would not take vows which he was never destined to perform.

It was apparently at the end of June or early in July that Augustus left Rome on his last journey. Travelling by road to Astura (Torre Astura) at the southern point of the little bay of Antium, he sailed thence to Capri and to Naples. On his way at Puteoli, the passengers and crew of a ship just come from Alexandria cheered the old man by their spontaneous homage, declaring, as they poured libations, that to him they owed life, safe passage on the seas, freedom and fortune.

At Naples, in spite of increasing disease, he bravely sat out a gymnastic contest held in his honour, and then accompanied Tiberius as far as Beneventum on his way to Brundusium and Illyricum. On his return he was forced by illness to stop at Nola, his father’s old home. Tiberius was hastily recalled and had a last confidential talk on affairs of state. Thenceforward, says Suetonius, he gave no more thought to such great affairs. He bade farewell to his friends, inquired after the health of Drusus’s daughter who was ill, and then quietly expired in the arms of the wife who for more than fifty years had been his most intimate and trusted guide and counsellor, and to whom his last words were an exhortation to “live mindful of our wedded life.” He died on the 19th of August,A.D.14, in the same room in which his father had died before him, and on the anniversary of his entrance upon his first consulship fifty-seven years before (43B.C.). The corpse was carried to Rome in slow procession along the Appian Way. On the day of the funeral it was borne to the Campus Martius on the shoulders of senators and there burnt. The ashes were reverently collected by Livia, and placed in the mausoleum by the Tiber which her husband had built for himself and his family. The last act was the formal decree of the senate by which Augustus, like his father Julius before him, was added to the number of the gods recognized by the Roman state.

If we except writers like Voltaire who could see in Augustus only the man who had destroyed the old republic and extinguished political liberty, the verdict of posterity on Augustus has varied just in proportion as his critics have fixed their attention, mainly, on the means by which he rose to power, or the use which he made of the power when acquired. The lines of argument followed respectively by friendly and hostile contemporaries immediately after his death (Tac.Ann. i. 9, 10) have been followed by later writers with little change. But of late years, our increasing mistrust of the current gossip about him, and our increased knowledge of the magnitude of what he actually accomplished, have conspicuously influenced the judgments passed upon him. We allow the faults and crimes of his early manhood, his cruelties and deceptions, his readiness to sacrifice everything that came between him and the end he had in view. On the other hand, a careful study of what he achieved between the years 38B.C., when he married Livia, and his death inA.D.14, is now held to give him a claim to rank, not merely as an astute and successful intriguer, or an accomplished political actor, but as one of the world’s great men, a statesman who conceived and carried through a scheme of political reconstruction which kept the empire together, secured peace and tranquillity, and preserved civilization for more than two centuries.

Bibliography.—The most comprehensive work on Augustus and his age is that of V. Gardthausen,Augustus und seine Zeit(2 vols., Leipzig, 1891-1904), which deals with all aspects of Augustus’s life, vol. ii. consisting of elaborate critical and bibliographical notes. See also histories of Rome generally, and among special works:—E.S. Shuckburgh,Augustus(London, 1903; reviewed by F.T. Richards inClass. Rev.vol. xviii.), containing the text of theMonumentum Ancyranum(see also Gardthausen, book xiii.); J.B. Firth,Augustus Caesar(London, 1903), in “Heroes of the Nations” series; O. Seeck, “Kaiser Augustus” (Monographien zur Weltgeschichte, xvii., 1902), nine essays on special problems,e.g.the campaigns of Mutina, Perusia and against Sextus Pompeius, “das Augustische Zeitalter”; A. Duméril, “Auguste et la fondation de l’empire romain,” in theAnnales de la Fac. des lett. de Bordeaux(1890); a suggestive monograph on the reforms of Augustus in relation to the decrease of population is Jules Ferlet’sL’Abaissement de la natalité à Rome(Paris, 1902).

(H. F. P.)

1On the name see Neumann, in Pauly-Wissowa’sRealencyclopädie f. cl. alterth., s.v. 2374.

AUGUSTUS I.(1526-1586), elector of Saxony, was the younger son of Henry, duke of Saxony, and consequently belonged to the Albertine branch of the Wettin family. Born at Freiberg on the 31st of July 1526, and brought up as a Lutheran, he received a good education and studied at the university of Leipzig. When Duke Henry died in 1541 he decreed that his lands should be divided equally between his two sons, but as his bequest was contrary to law, it was not carried out, and the dukedom passed almost intact to his elder son, Maurice. Augustus, however, remained on friendly terms with his brother, and to further his policy spent some time at the court of the German king, Ferdinand I., in Vienna. In 1544 Maurice secured the appointment of his brother as administrator of the bishopric of Merseburg; but Augustus was very extravagant and was soon compelled to return to the Saxon court at Dresden. Augustus supported his brother during the war of the league of Schmalkalden, and in the policy which culminated in the transfer of the Saxon electorate from John Frederick I., the head of the Ernestine branch of the Wettinfamily, to Maurice. On the 7th of October 1548 Augustus was married at Torgau to Anna, daughter of Christian III., king of Denmark, and took up his residence at Weissenfels. But he soon desired a more imposing establishment. The result was that Maurice made more generous provision for his brother, who acted as regent of Saxony in 1552 during the absence of the elector. Augustus was on a visit to Denmark when by Maurice’s death in July 1553 he became elector of Saxony.

The first care of the new elector was to come to terms with John Frederick, and to strengthen his own hold upon the electoral position. This object was secured by a treaty made at Naumburg in February 1554, when, in return for the grant of Altenburg and other lands, John Frederick recognized Augustus as elector of Saxony. The elector, however, was continually haunted by the fear that the Ernestines would attempt to deprive him of the coveted dignity, and his policy both in Saxony and in Germany was coloured by this fear. In imperial politics Augustus acted upon two main principles: to cultivate the friendship of the Habsburgs, and to maintain peace between the contending religious parties. To this policy may be traced his share in bringing about the religious peace of Augsburg in 1555, his tortuous conduct at the diet of Augsburg eleven years later, and his reluctance to break entirely with the Calvinists. On one occasion only did he waver in his allegiance to the Habsburgs. In 1568 a marriage was arranged between John Casimir, son of the elector palatine, Frederick III., and Elizabeth, a daughter of Augustus, and for a time it seemed possible that the Saxon elector would support his son-in-law in his attempts to aid the revolting inhabitants of the Netherlands. Augustus also entered into communication with the Huguenots; but his aversion to foreign complications prevailed, and the incipient friendship with the elector palatine soon gave way to serious dislike. Although a sturdy Lutheran the elector hoped at one time to unite the Protestants, on whom he continually urged the necessity of giving no cause of offence to their opponents, and he favoured the movement to get rid of the clause in the peace of Augsburg concerning ecclesiastical reservation, which was offensive to many Protestants. His moderation, however, prevented him from joining those who were prepared to take strong measures to attain this end, and he refused to jeopardize the concessions already won.

The hostility between the Albertines and the Ernestines gave serious trouble to Augustus. A preacher named Matthias Flacius held an influential position in ducal Saxony, and taught a form of Lutheranism different from that taught in electoral Saxony. This breach was widened when Flacius began to make personal attacks on Augustus, to prophesy his speedy downfall, and to incite Duke John Frederick to make an effort to recover his rightful position. Associated with Flacius was a knight, William of Grumbach, who, not satisfied with words only, made inroads into electoral Saxony and sought the aid of foreign powers in his plan to depose Augustus. After some delay Grumbach and his protector, John Frederick, were placed under the imperial ban, and Augustus was entrusted with its execution. His campaign in 1567 was short and successful. John Frederick surrendered, and passed his time in prison until his death in 1595; Grumbach was taken and executed; and the position of the elector was made quite secure.

The form of Lutheranism taught in electoral Saxony was that of Melanchthon, and many of its teachers and adherents, who were afterwards called Crypto-Calvinists, were favoured by the elector. When Augustus, freed from the fear of an attack by the Ernestines, became gradually estranged from the elector palatine and the Calvinists, he seemed to have looked with suspicion upon the Crypto-Calvinists, who did not preach the pure doctrines of Luther. Spurred on by his wife the matter reached a climax in 1574, when letters were discovered, which, while revealing a hope to bring over Augustus to Calvinism, cast some aspersions upon the elector and his wife. Augustus ordered the leaders of the Crypto-Calvinists to be seized, and they were tortured and imprisoned. A strict form of Lutheranism was declared binding upon all the inhabitants of Saxony, and many persons were banished from the country. In 1576 he made a serious but unsuccessful attempt to unite the Protestants upon the basis of some articles drawn up at Tolgau, which inculcated a strict form of Lutheranism. The change in Saxony, however, made no difference to the attitude of Augustus on imperial questions. In 1576 he opposed the proposal of the Protestant princes to make a grant for the Turkish War conditional upon the abolition of the clause concerning ecclesiastical reservation, and he continued to support the Habsburgs.

Much of the elector’s time was devoted to extending his territories. In 1573 he became guardian to the two sons of John William, duke of Saxe-Weimar, and in this capacity was able to add part of the county of Henneberg to electoral Saxony. His command of money enabled him to take advantage of the poverty of his neighbours, and in this way he secured Vogtland and the county of Mansfeld. In 1555 he had appointed one of his nominees to the bishopric of Meissen, in 1561 he had secured the election of his son Alexander as bishop of Merseburg, and three years later as bishop of Naumburg; and when this prince died in 1565 these bishoprics came under the direct rule of Augustus.

As a ruler of Saxony Augustus was economical and enlightened. He favoured trade by encouraging Flemish emigrants to settle in the country, by improving the roads, regulating the coinage and establishing the first posts. He was specially interested in benefiting agriculture, and added several fine buildings to the city of Dresden. His laws were numerous and comprehensive. The constitution of 1572 was his work, and by these laws the church, the universities and the police were regulated, the administration of justice was improved, and the raising of taxes placed upon a better footing (seeSaxony).

In October 1585 the electress Anna died, and a few weeks later Augustus married Agnes Hedwig, a daughter of Joachim Ernest, prince of Anhalt. His own death took place at Dresden on the 21st of January 1586, and he was buried at Freiberg. By his first wife he had fifteen children, but only four of these survived him, among whom was his successor, the elector Christian I. (1560-1591). Augustus was a covetous, cruel and superstitious man, but these qualities were redeemed by his political caution and his wise methods of government. He wrote a small work on agriculture entitledKünstlich Obstund Gartenbüchlein.

See C.W. Böttiger and T. Flathe,Geschichte Sachsens, Band ii. (Gotha, 1870); M. Ritter,Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation, Band i. (Stuttgart, 1890); R. Calinich,Kampf und Untergang des Melanchthonismus in Kursachsen(Leipzig, 1866); J. Falke,Geschichte des Kurfürsten August in volkswirtschaftlicher Beziehung(Leipzig, 1868); J. Janssen,Geschichte des Deutschen Volks seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters(Freiburg, 1885-1894); W. Wenck,Kurfürst Moritz und Herzog August(Leipzig, 1874).

AUGUSTUS II.,king of Poland, and, asFrederick Augustus I., elector of Saxony (1670-1733), second son of John George III., elector of Saxony, was born at Dresden on the 12th of May 1670. He was well educated, spent some years in travel and in fighting against France, and on account of his immense strength was known as “the Strong.” On the death of his brother, John George IV., in 1694, he became elector of Saxony, and in 1695 and 1696 led the imperial troops against the Turks, but without very much success. When John Sobieski died in 1696, Augustus was a candidate for the Polish throne, and in order to further his chances became a Roman Catholic, a step which was strongly resented in Saxony. By a lavish expenditure of money, and by his promptness in entering the country, he secured his election and coronation in September 1697, and his principal rival F.L. de Bourbon, prince of Conti, abandoned the contest and returned to France. Augustus continued the war against the Turks for a time, and being anxious to extend his influence and to find a pretext for retaining the Saxon troops in Poland, made an alliance in 1699 with Russia and Denmark against Charles XII. of Sweden. The Poles would not assist, and at the head of the Saxons Augustus invaded Livonia, but for various causes the campaign was not a success, and in July 1702 he was defeated by Charles at Klissow. Augustus was then deposed in Poland,and after holding Warsaw for a short time he fled to Saxony. The alliance with Russia was renewed and in reply Charles invaded Saxony in 1706, and compelled the elector to sign the treaty of Altranstädt in September of that year, to recognize Stanislaus Leszczynski as his successor in Poland, and to abandon the Russian alliance. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Augustus fought with the imperialists in the Netherlands, but after the defeat of Charles XII. at Poltawa in July 1709, he turned his attention to the recovery of Poland. Declaring the treaty of Altranstädt void and renewing his alliance with Russia and Denmark, he quickly recovered the Polish crown. He then attacked Swedish Pomerania. He was handicapped by the mutual jealousy of the Saxons and the Poles, and a struggle broke out in Poland which was only ended when the king promised to limit the number of his army in that country to 18,000 men. Peace was made with Sweden in December 1719 at Stockholm after the death of Charles XII., and Augustus was recognized as king of Poland. His remaining years were spent in futile plans to make Poland a hereditary monarchy, to weaken the power of the Saxon nobles, and to gain territory for his sons in various parts of Europe. He was a man of extravagant and luxurious tastes, and, although he greatly improved the city of Dresden, he cannot be called a good ruler. He sought to govern Saxony in an absolute fashion, and, in spite of his declaration that his conversion to Roman Catholicism was personal only, assisted the spread of the teachings of Rome. His wife was Christine Eberhardine, a member of the Hohenzollern family, who left him when he became a Roman Catholic, and died in 1727. Augustus died at Warsaw on the 1st of February 1733, leaving a son Frederick Augustus, who succeeded him in Poland and Saxony, and many illegitimate children, among whom was the famous general, Maurice of Saxony, known as Marshal Saxe (q.v.).

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